WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday he is looking forward to discussing with President Joe Biden a \u201creasonable and responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling \u201d when the two meet Wednesday for their first sit-down at the White House since McCarthy was elected to the post.<\/p>\n
McCarthy, R-Calif., said he wants to address spending cuts along with raising the debt limit, even though the White House has ruled out linking those two issues together as the government tries to avoid a potentially devastating financial default.<\/p>\n
The speaker pledged that cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be off the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the president said he didn\u2019t want to have any discussion (on cuts), but I think it\u2019s very important that our whole government is designed to find compromise,\u201d McCarthy told CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d \u201cI want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path to balance and at the same time not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
READ MORE:<\/strong> McCarthy invites Biden to deliver his State of the Union address on Feb. 7<\/a><\/p>\n After McCarthy disclosed the upcoming meeting during the television interview, the White House provided confirmation.<\/p>\n McCarthy was elected speaker on a historic post-midnight 15th ballot early on Jan. 7, overcoming holdouts from his own ranks and tensions that have tested the new GOP majority ability to govern.<\/p>\n Word of the long-awaited White House meeting comes at a time of divided government in Washington with a debt ceiling crisis brewing and House Republicans ready for confrontation.<\/p>\n McCarthy has been eager to push Biden to the negotiating table, hoping to make good on the promises the GOP leader made to holdouts during his campaign to become speaker to pare federal spending back to 2022 budget levels, which would be a sizable 8 percent budget cut.<\/p>\n The White House has made clear that Biden is not willing to entertain policy concessions in exchange for lifting the debt limit, which is the nation\u2019s borrowing authority. The United States bumped up against that limit earlier this month, and the Treasury Department has deployed \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d to stave off a potential default for at least a few more months.<\/p>\n Biden himself has scoffed at the idea of negotiating spending cuts, telling Democratic congressional leaders last week that Republicans were \u201cgenuinely serious about cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n President Joe Biden meets with congressional leaders including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell at the White House in Washington, D.C., Nov. 29, 2022. Photo by Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On Sunday, when McCarthy was asked if he would push cuts to those programs, he said, \u201cLet\u2019s take those off the table.\u201d Pressed on possible defense cuts that he may have promised to House conservatives, McCarthy responded: \u201cI want to eliminate waste wherever it is. \u2026 I want to look at every single department.\u201d<\/p>\n The coming debt limit showdown has a familiar precedent.<\/p>\n A little more than a decade ago, a new generation of tea party House Republicans swept to power, eager to confront the Obama administration to slash federal spending and curb the nation\u2019s ballooning debt load. As vice president at the time, Biden was central to those negotiations. But House Republicans and the White House could never strike a deal, causing a fiscal crisis. This time, Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress are in no mood to broker deals with a new era of hard-line Republicans led by the Freedom Caucus.<\/p>\n McCarthy pointed to Biden\u2019s previous experience in trying to negotiate spending cuts and said he\u2019s hopeful the president will be open to listening again.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the president is going to be willing to make an agreement together,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n In an Associated Press interview last weekend, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she expected Congress would ultimately vote to raise the limit. But she said GOP demands for spending cuts in return for backing an increase were \u201ca very irresponsible thing to do\u201d and risk creating a \u201cself-imposed calamity\u201d for the global economy.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday he is looking forward to discussing with President Joe Biden a \u201creasonable and responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling \u201d when the two meet Wednesday for their first sit-down at the White House since McCarthy was elected to the post. McCarthy, R-Calif., said …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Biden](\"https:\/\/d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net\/static\/2023\/01\/2022-11-29T160331Z_2071259081_RC2QVX94UILL_RTRMADP_3_USA-BIDEN-1024x616.jpg\")
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